


Comes Back Around

by CrayfishCoffee



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Siblings, especially with family relations?, love making obscure and purely arbitrary connections?, well then you're in luck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 18:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7449889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrayfishCoffee/pseuds/CrayfishCoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You laugh along with with the group about some punchline you didn’t hear, because leave it to Carolina and Wash to get back in the lime light so soon after being fucking dead. You aren’t the only one who made it out of Freelancer alive.<br/><br/>479er takes an unexpected trip to a foreign planet and finds it surprisingly familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comes Back Around

**Author's Note:**

> I personally adore the headcannon that Caboose's comment about having '17 sisters' is an allusion to growing up in an orphanage as well as 479er surviving Freelancer to hypothetically visit Chorus. 
> 
> So I combined the two. 
> 
> Enjoy.

You look down at your glass and sigh. Probably the worst part of being a pilot for the UNSC is the rule against drinking within 24 hours of an assignment. Which means that when some soldiers at your current base invite you out for drinks, you are the one who’ll end up fired if you decide to get happily wasted during the night. Taking a bitter gulp of lemonade, you gaze enviously at the empty shot glasses littered around your entourage. But even if you weren’t being shipped off tomorrow and were actually allowed to have some fun like the rest of them, there would still be that lingering feeling of disconnect when you try to get in on the conversation. The people who brought you along are friendly and warm, but no amount of claps on the shoulder or empty grins can get rid of the obvious lack of military history between you and them. Names are tossed and caught, and vague references are made that have the group rioting with laughter. Meanwhile you sit back, pretend to enjoy yourself, and sip your god-damn lemonade. You aren’t angry, the simple fact is you don’t share these people’s past, and they sure as hell don’t share yours. You just can’t help but resent that all the people who would are long gone.

You drink your lemonade.  

To pass the time, you’ve been idly inspecting the small tavern, tuning out the conversation in favor of gazing at the cheap décor. Worn military memorabilia is scattered across the walls along with faded newspaper clippings you can’t properly read from your stool. Besides a couple of booths and the actual bar, the only other furniture is an ancient pool table in a dusty corner surrounded by several men pretending to know how to play. You start to get truly bored around the fourth visual pat down, and your fingers start to leisurely trace meaningless swirls on the counter with the condensation gathered on your glass.

You fantasize punching whoever made the bullshit drinking rule in the neck.

You’re in the midst of admiring the bartender’s nice jaw. . . when your eyes are immediately drawn to something bright flashing on the screen above said bartender’s head.  “Colorful Space Marines Stop Corruption” scrolls across a banner next to some lady reading off a story that couldn’t be heard above the din of the tavern, but it’s the image accompanying the headline that has you rapt with attention. True to the title, a rainbow of armor sets is depicted in the picture, which isn’t really what strikes you as strange considering your job history. No, what truly have the muscles in your back coiled and tense are two of the heroes, wearing colors that are far too familiar for comfort. The obnoxious shade of aqua and the grey with the yellow accents.

The icy lemonade chilling your palm reassures you that this time, this isn’t some drunken hallucination. But this still shouldn’t be real. This can’t be real. All the freelancers have been dead for a long time, but even from your stool you can see the way the figures hold themselves. You just know.

Leaning back in your chair, you finish off the rest of the lemonade and wish for something stronger. You order another. By the time it arrives, the station on the television is going on about some satellite or another, and you pretend to appreciate the lemonade when you turn back to the group. You comb your fingers through your hair as you laugh along with them about some punchline you didn’t hear, because leave it to Carolina and Wash to get back in the lime light so soon after being fucking dead. You aren’t the only one to make it out of Freelancer alive.  
_______________________________________________________________

Pilots tend to adopt the nasty habit of thinking. It comes from sitting still for hours on end staring at the same damn controls on the same damn ship, with nothing better to do. Pilots are habitual thinkers, and you are no exception. You try to counteract it by deliberately focusing on nothing, but about hour 3 into your flight of endless boredom, your concentration wanes and you slip into mission thinking. The mission to the edge of bumfuck nowhere. Where a bunch of infamous “colorful space marines” have just so happened to disappear to. You have to admit, when you had first been notified about this particular assignment, you had been far from ecstatic about the agonizingly long journey for something as simple as a fucking supply carrier. They had also been considerate enough wake you up for the job early enough in the AM to be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

What a bunch of pricks.

You know you are one of their more valued pilots, normally enlisted for vital drop off and extraction, and it was rare for normal domestic missions to be brought to you. Your skill and loyalty as a pilot were the saving graces that had lifted you out when Freelancer went to shit. Most everyone who was directly involved in that catastrophe of a project was either quietly disposed off or shipped off to some obscure facility, never to be heard of again. Lucky for you, some higher up decided a pilot of your caliber was a resource not to be ignored. After several sessions of heavy and thorough interrogations, the UNSC decided you didn’t know quite enough to pose any considerable threat.

They cut you a deal. In return for your total and complete silence regarding any matters concerning ex-project Freelancer, you get to keep your job working for the UNSC and your limited sense of freedom. So as far as anyone’s concerned, you’ve just been flying UNSC crafts for as long as you’ve been working for this god forsaken military.  Any deviations from that story would involve a whole bunch of nasty trouble for you and for a specific little household on a certain moon colony.

Hey, you take what you can get.

So when missions so menial and odd as this one are presented to you, there’s not exactly the luxury of questioning orders, much less outright saying “no.” You admittedly hadn’t initially given the assignment description anything more than a bleary glance (so sue you if you aren’t the most coherent when woken up middle of the night.) But once you had hastily shoved some breakfast into your stomach and pulled on your suit, you notice a crucial detail that makes it very clear why you were selected for this particular delivery. Seems like your supply delivery will double as a transport on the trip back, for none other than the famous heroes that went mysteriously missing a couple months back. After months of complete radio silence, they suddenly made contact from some obscure space colony designated “Chorus”. Their transmission was quite the doozy, dishing out a lot of sensitive information and condemning testimony (with some choice expletives thrown in) that resulted in a lot of fuss and forced resignations among big figures. Which is why it makes sense for you to be piloting this mission. These marines show up out of nowhere, make a super huge splash and end up exposing a whole ton of corruption among the higher ranks. It’s only natural the new people in charge want to guarantee that they can get their hands on these people, for official reports and analysis of these guys.

You become a lot more invested in this whole thing once you figure out who’s on planet, but you don’t even know what’s your game-plan once you get there. Maybe outright start up some thrilling conversation?

“Hey Carolina, hey Wash! Remember me, it’s your old pal 479er from the good old days right? Isn’t it great that we aren’t dead? Kind of sucks how all the others are though. Don’t you just love how I’ve come to take you back to the officials who you probably still don’t trust and who probably don’t totally trust you? Fantastic!”

Right, just fantastic.

Of course, there’s always the option of just ignoring them and being a goddamn professional. But Wash gets nervous on flights and Carolina likes to be thorough, so it’s pretty fucking unlikely that at least one of them won’t stop by to speak with the pilot, and even less likely one of them won’t recognize your voice. Perfect. And the people you pledged silence to are pretty much out for the count, so you don’t even know just how free you are to openly chat it up with Freelancer’s finest without worrying about hidden microphones and invasive cameras.

You settle back into your chair and go to rub your face, but your fingertips meet smooth glass. Oh right. Helmets. You undo the seal and cleanly tug it off, scrubbing your eyes and face until you see stars. Letting your head loll back, you inspect the bland metal of the ceiling above your head. You breathe in the stale ship’s air, testing out how well your lungs are doing today. Checking the route, it looks clear for long way until a small meteor cluster. You deem it safe enough to switch to autopilot. You’re tired of thinking for the moment. Getting up to stretch out your stiff muscles, you leave your station to go take your well deserved coffee break.  
______________________________________________________________

You had to admit, when you skimmed over the file detailing Chorus, you weren’t quite sure what to expect. Even though the file dictated the conflict was resolved, years of civil war can make people unfriendly and unpredictable. Plus, it doesn’t help that they kind of lost a lot of their own to UNSC fire, so you can’t blame them for still being somewhat hostile to outside forces. Fortunately, though, when you broke atmosphere, your ship made a smooth and safe landing without any missiles or artillery being shot at you, so that was a promising sign. As the rest of the crew set up for unloading, you took a second before the bay doors opened to take a death breathe of filtered air, and to steel your nerves.

The people of Chorus are far more open and hospitable than you imagined. There were already people at the loading dock, ready to help carry and organize the supplies. And to talk. It makes sense, these people have been isolated with the same crowd on a planet that had had made itself real un-neighborly for a while. New people are a commodity that gets them excited. While you are trying to command the idiotic unloading team on the proper way to organize the cargo, several Chorus inhabitants mill around you. They ask questions faster than you can answer and crowd you a little more than you’re comfortable with, but no matter how much these “soldiers” are getting underfoot, you can’t quite bring yourself to tell them to get lost. Something about how they act, like a bunch of excited puppies bouncing around and the sincere frankness in their speech, you find vaguely familiar. It brings you back to a time full of too many mismatched kids running around a too small house on a far off moon. There’s even one woman in particular who has a lisp and talks almost as if she is trying to form words around an ill-fitting retainer.

How old are these people supposed to be exactly?

Before you get the chance to ask, you catch a couple of far off soldiers decked out in brightly colored armor in your peripheral. There’s four of them: orange, maroon, turquoise, and blue. No aqua or grey. You can’t decide whether the tug in your gut is relief or annoyance. Nevertheless, you break out of the circle and start to approach them.

The soldiers looked to be talking about something from where you spotted them, but the closer you get the more the conversation looks more like a heated debate. At least between three of them. Maroon looks ready to explode, feverously motioning with his hands and looking at Turquoise for assistance. Orange tends to shrug whenever Maroon throws his hands in the air, which only seems to escalate the situation. Turquoise seems to be more amused than anything, standing to the side and occasionally throwing in some commentary. The tallest, Blue, is . . . silently staring into the sky. You look and only spot a couple of normal-looking clouds marring the perfectly clear atmosphere.

Huh.

So, you aren’t touching on that, and you don’t feel like breaking up whatever Maroon and Orange have going on. Which makes Turquoise your best bet. As you enter hearing range, you slowly begin to pick up on bits of conversation.

“. . . just because your helmet has a filter installed in it, doesn’t mean you can go around smoking inside it without worrying! That’s just not how helmet filters work!”

“Dude calm down. Why are you making this such a big deal?”

“Because those are my lungs you are breathing through, jackass, and you are not giving my lungs cancer!”

Wow. What would you do for some context.

Turquoise is too busy laughing his ass off to notice you sidling up to him, until you very pointedly clear your throat. He starts and quickly swivels around to face you, his shoulders bunched in surprise as he quickly realizes you are one of the ship’s crew. He lifts his head to say something, but you beat him to it.

“Sorry to break up your fascinating conversation, but can you tell me where Agents Carolina and Washington are at the moment?”

Turquoise pauses at the sudden question, but is quick to come back with an answer, “Oh Carolina and Wash? Hmm, I don’t know where Wash is right now, but you can probably find him harassing the people in the training room. As for Carolina, she’s talking with Kimball in her office, probably best not to interrupt that just yet. . .”

You try to cover up your disappointment, but apparently you don’t do a good enough job, because Turquoise is immediately on it.

“But if you want, I can go get Wash from wherever he’s lurking. Whatever he’s doing can’t be too important if you really need to talk to him-”

“No, no, it’s fine. Just, never mind.” You wave him off and start making your way back to the ship.

“My name’s Tucker if you need anything. . .” you hear him call after you, but you are already regretting the question. You don’t really know why you asked where they were, or what you even wanted as an answer. It isn’t a lie to say you don’t want to see them, but it isn’t exactly a lie to say that you do either. Frustration builds in your gut, distracting you from noticing how one of the soldiers isn’t staring up anymore. He’s staring at you.

Just as you are considering just locking yourself in your barracks, your visor is unexpectedly filled with a massive expanse of blue. You stifle a yelp and leap back to try to get a proper visual, but the suit of armor only rushes in to compensate, following you step for step. Good lord, Blue really is huge, hunching over to try to be eyelevel with you. You catch the end of Tucker yelling somewhere behind you, “-Shit Caboose what are you doing?!”

Wait. What did he just call Blue? There can’t be too many people who go by Caboose roaming the universe but still. . .

Your helmet feels too tight, too small but when you try to take it off, your hands are frozen by your sides. It’s funny how one word can have that effect on someone, have them suddenly leaning in, trying to see through the painfully reflective visor of a soldier in blue. How one word can bring you suddenly back to a small moon colony where a ragtag bunch of kids became a family. You hear the loud footsteps of what’s probably one of the colorful soldiers coming to retrieve their friend, but it sounds filtered and far away. Your throat feels dry and constricted, but you manage to work your leaden tongue to construct one crucial word.

“Michael?”

Blue lets out this long barking laugh, and suddenly your world is thrown into a blur as he effortlessly spins you around. Still reeling over everything, all you can manage to do is huff out shaky chuckles with him and scrunch your eyes around the tears threatening to spill, because he’s here, but why is he here, and he’s a little bit of home you’ve been denied for so long. Eventually he stops twirling you around, but he doesn’t let you go, opting instead to just pin you in place against his breast plate. You marvel at how much he’s grown; you can’t even touch the floor from where he’s holding you.

“Ok, um sorry to interrupt, but can someone explain to me what exactly is happening here?”

You look up to find a good deal of people pausing to stare curiously at the scene along with the colorful marines from earlier, who look about as dumbfounded as you feel. It’s hard to act dignified when you have your arms pinned against your sides and can’t balance yourself with your feet, but you are going to damn well try your best. You clear your throat and begin, “Um yeah, well Michael and I were-”

Michael pipes up before you can even get halfway through, lifting you higher to show you off.

“Oh this is Birdy. She’s nice and smart and friendly and here and a sister!”

Your heart goes all stiff and achy. You can’t remember the last time you were called that, and by that voice for that matter. It’s been so long since you got the chance to call Michael, ‘Caboose’.

Of course, that doesn’t answer anything, so you try squirming a little to try to get Caboose to set you down. However, the cue flies right over his head. He turns his helmet to look at you and asks if you aren’t comfortable. No matter how much he’s grown, he obviously hasn’t changed a bit from that little spaced out kid you once know. You can’t help but feel comforted by the lack of change, but at the same time it worries you. What the hell is the army doing, assigning Caboose as a foot soldier? And putting him in direct battle situations no less?

A little knot of rage flares up in your chest, and you are suddenly very, very angry.

“Uh Caboose buddy, I think the pilot lady really wants to be set down now. . .” Tucker has an arm somewhat outstretched, but not really close enough to touch Caboose. Thankfully, Caboose seems to finally get the message. He drops you, and your legs almost buckle at the sudden impact, but you manage to solidly land with no flukes. When you straighten, Tucker still looks uncertain but full of questions. So you decide to ask one of your own.

You walk right up to him, grab onto the sides of his chest plate, and bring him in close enough that your visors are almost touching. Take a deep breath.

“Can you please explain to me, what the ever loving fuck is Caboose doing here!”

Tucker tries his best to shake your death grip, but hell if you’re letting this little shit go without the answers you want.

“What are you talking about? Caboose crashed along with the rest of us-” You shake him. Hard.

“I mean, why is my little brother in the middle of a fucking warzone? What are you thinking, giving him a weapon and putting him in the line of fire? He obviously isn’t fit for military duty as any idiot with a brain between their ears can- wait, Caboose-”

And just like that Caboose is lifting you off the ground again, saying something about how fighting friends isn’t allowed but you’re still too heated to really concentrate on what he’s saying. You flail your legs out, and before Tucker can get to a safe distance, you get a good solid kick to his chest. You can practically see the air flying out of his lungs, and you feel a kind of sick sense of satisfaction as he sprawls out on the ground.

“What is going on here?”

The soldiers all turn to pay attention to the strong voice, including Caboose who still has you in his grip. The behavior of the crowd and the armor type of the speaker tips you off that this has to be the main authority figure of Chorus, Vanessa Kimball. The presence and respect she commands over the crowd grants her your admiration, and you suddenly feel more conscious of how your feet dangle helplessly. Then another figure comes in behind her and holy shit, can you not get a single break?

She comes into step with Kimball as they approach the scene, taking in the winded Tucker, starting to prop himself up off the ground. Then look at Caboose, holding up a pilot fresh from a temper tantrum. Can you ask for better timing? To your surprise, it’s Orange that speaks up first, “I don’t know man, Caboose and this lady started hugging it out. Then she went all scream-y at us for no reason and kicked Tucker’s ass before you guys came in.”

Kimball turned to you, probably expecting some kind of explanation but you are far more interested in her companion. The armor is new, which means she deliberately kept that color after all these years. She hadn’t really struck you as the nostalgic type, but you hadn’t exactly been around to see how much she could have changed either.

Kimball clears her throat and yeah you should probably say something. But all the carefully crafted phrases and talk you had managed to muster abandoned you the second they came in, so you’re left with the ever so eloquent:

“So, yeah.”

There’s a moment of silence when you look at her, when you don’t see any kind of reaction and you begin to doubt. Her body language is still, and you can’t make out anything behind the impassive helmet. Was the sound of your voice not enough? Did she actually not recognize you?

Then, “Caboose, can you put her down?”

You feel the ground return under your feet as Caboose lets you go, and you pause. Not exactly sure where to go from there, you opt to go ahead and start actually explaining. You straighten up and open your mouth to start, but before you can get a word out, she surprises you by throwing you back with one hard shove. Caught off guard, you lose balance and join Tucker on the ground. You immediately push yourself up, indignation taking place of your uncertainty because what the hell, but she cuts you off again. With laughter. Carolina is laughing above you, a full-throated sound that sounds strained at the edges. You’d probably be thinking that she’d knocked a screw loose while you’ve been gone, except you’re pretty much in the same boat.

Carolina sticks out her hand to you, and you can practically hear the grin in her voice.

“Took you long enough.”

And taking one good look at her hand, you take it.  
______________________________________________________________

The roof where you and Carolina are sitting has to belong to one of the tallest buildings in the complex, giving a wide view of the surrounding area. It’s strange, looking down at all the suits of armor milling about, going places and speaking with each other. Armor is a curious thing. Sure, it helps protect you during battles and wartime, but at the same time it helps the person holding the barrel to your head forget you are even human. Armor hides away all that you are except for your voice and your weapon accuracy. Funny how that shit works out. But looking at them so far away drags out the affect. From so far away, you even have a hard time deciphering height, they are just little ants sporting their own little splash of color.

Looking at them, it brings you back to a question that had popped into your head when you had first set foot on this planet. You turn to look at Carolina, who has spread herself out on the roof like she owns the place. The metal can’t be too comfortable, but she looks just fine with her interlocked hands cushioning the back of her head. She isn’t wearing her helmet, so you can see the way her eyes gaze up at the flat clouds drifting across the sky. She breathes in deep the scent of oil and smoke. No immediate tension scrunches her eyebrows; no looks of murderous intent are etched into her face. She lies open to the air like for once she isn’t worried about imminent attack; she looks more peaceful than you have ever seen her.

“These Chorus soldiers, they don’t seem very qualified.” She doesn’t look away from the sky, but she tips her head slightly in your direction, a sign you have her attention. “And they don’t behave like most of the standard soldiers I’ve come across. I know a lot of bad stuff went down here, but don’t you feel there really is something off about this army?”

Carolina closes her eyes as she releases a heavy sigh. She pauses a moment, thinking carefully before opening her eyes again. “You read about the conflict and about the mercenary intervention right? The civil war was meant to be a death funnel, countless soldiers slaughtered. Everyone had dead people. Practically all of the original military force were completely wiped out.”

You have a sick feeling about where this is going, but you really don’t want to be right.

“The war kept going so they had to find new soldiers, leaving them to look to the younger generation. You know the General Kimball? She’s not even in her late twenties and still she’s one of the senior members around base.”

Your chest tightens with your sharp breath. “War is cruel, and it calls for some real ugly decisions. . .” the resigned nonchalance in her voice has your teeth grinding into a fine powder, and your mouth traveling faster than your head.

“No!”

You don’t realize how forcefully you say it until you notice Carolina propped up on her elbows, fully facing you with a curious expression on her face. Huffing in frustration, you bring bring up a leg and wrap your arms firmly around it. You rest your chin on top of the kneecap and let the moment rest for a second.

“. . . Back during the Great War, the military was constantly looking for people to replace the soldiers they lost. I don’t know how much you know about the military drafts, but one mandate ruled that during wartime, any orphanage resident at the age of 18 was required to enlist in the military. No questions asked, soon as it’s that lucky number you’re out of there.”

Carolina doesn’t say anything, and you spot a soldier wearing a stripe of deep blue. Must be one of the squad put under Michael’s care.

“I think out of all of us, the one we were most worried about was Caboose. How could we not? He was a good kid, a little fuzzy at the edges, but good. He was that ray of sunshine that we desperately needed. He fooled around, made jokes, even gave each of us weird nicknames. Named me Birdy if you can get the irony from my career. . . The thing is about leftovers, Carolina, is that they stick together. The draft slowly took away more and more of us. I slowly watched as with each fucking year, the kids grew more and more haggard and terrified with their imminent send-off. I guess when it was my turn, I had just hoped that it would be all over before Caboose had the chance to blow out his birthday candles.”

You can’t help the bitter chuckle that escapes your throat, “I guess he barely managed to make it.”

Looking back down at the populace of Chorus, you wonder. How many of them still have people left? Do any of them have siblings, family? You can see how much they’ve lost in the subtle way they cling to each other, with the smallest desperation of someone who doesn’t want to be left alone. You aren’t even sure you can recall ever seeing one of them on their own, they always come and go in pairs or groups. Never is one without another.

Thinking about the kid soldiers makes you ache, and talking about the past is making you tired. You stretch back and mirror Carolina’s earlier pose, looking up at the flat sky. After a couple of seconds, you hear her shift to join you. There are a lot of unsaid words floating through the air that you don’t have the energy for right now, so the silence is a comfort. The only sound between the two of you being quiet, only occasionally disrupted with faint whistling from Carolina’s nose.

“Children shouldn’t fight wars.” You aren’t entirely sure if it was meant for her, but you think you hear a vague noise of agreement. Trying your best to clear your head, you look up at the sky of this strange new planet that was already so familiar.

**Author's Note:**

> first fic. comments appreciated ;u;


End file.
